Congressional Record: November 8, 2005 (House)
Page H10012-H10013
STONEWALLING CONGRESS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fortenberry). Under a previous order of
the House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) is recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, first of all, let me thank
my friend and colleague for allowing me to take this 5-minute special
order before his 1 hour. I will be brief, but I rise for an issue of
severe concern to me, Mr. Speaker.
As someone who has spent 19 years working on defense and security
issues in this Congress and currently serves as the vice chairman of
the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, I have to report
to my colleagues continuing efforts to try to find out what happened
before 9/11 and, unfortunately, have to report that we are being
stonewalled. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I cannot use any other term but the
appearance of a cover-up.
Just a few moments ago, I questioned one of the cochairs of the 9/11
Commission, Lee Hamilton, why the Commission has not yet responded to a
letter that I sent to them on August 10 of this year, which I will
enter into the Record at this point.
August 10, 2005.
Hon. Thomas H. Kean, Chairman,
Hon. Lee H. Hamilton, Vice Chairman,
9/11 Public Discourse Project, One DuPont Circle, NW.,
Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Kean and Vice Chairman Hamilton: I am
contacting you to discuss an important issue that concerns
the terrible events of September 11, 2001, and our country's
efforts to ensure that such a calamity is never again allowed
to occur. Your bipartisan work on The National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States shed light on much
that was unclear in the minds of the American people
regarding what happened that fateful day, however there
appears to be more to the story than the public has been
told. I bring this before you because of my respect for you
both, and for the 9-11 Commission's service to America.
Almost seven years ago, the National Defense Authorization
Act for Fiscal Year 1999 established the Advisory Panel to
Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving
Weapons of Mass Destruction, otherwise known as the Gilmore
Commission. The Gilmore Commission reached many of the same
conclusions as your panel, and in December of 2000 called for
the creation of a ``National Office for Combating
Terrorism.'' I mention this because prior to 9/11, Congress
was aware of many of the institutional obstacles to
preventing a terrorist attack, and was actively attempting to
address them. I know this because I authored the language
establishing the Gilmore Commission.
In the 1990's, as chairman of the congressional
subcommittee that oversaw research and development for the
Department of Defense, I paid special attention to the
activities of the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity
(LIWA) at Ft. Belvoir. During that time, I led a bipartisan
delegation of Members of Congress to Vienna, Austria to meet
with members of the Russian parliament, or Duma. Before
leaving, I received a brief from the CIA on a Serbian
individual that would be attending the meeting. The CIA
provided me with a single paragraph of information. On the
other hand, representatives of LIWA gave me five pages of far
more in-depth analysis. This was cause for concern, but my
debriefing with the CIA and FBI following the trip was cause
for outright alarm: neither had ever heard of LIWA or the
data mining capability it possessed.
As a result of experiences such as these, I introduced
language into three successive Defense Authorization bills
calling for the creation of an intelligence fusion center
which I called NOAH, or National Operations and Analysis Hub.
The NOAH concept is certainly familiar now, and is one of
several recommendations made by your commission that has a
basis in earlier acts of Congress. Despite my repeated
efforts to establish NOAH, the CIA insisted that it would not
be practical. Fortunately, this bureaucratic intransigence
was overcome when Congress and President Bush acted in 2003
to create the Terrorism Threat Integration Center (now the
National Counterterrorism Center). Unfortunately, it took the
deaths of 3,000 people to bring us to the point where we
could make this happen. Now, I am confident that under the
able leadership of John Negroponte, the days of toleration
for intelligence agencies that refuse to share information
with each other are behind us.
The 9-11 Commission produced a book-length account of its
findings, that the American people might educate themselves
on the challenges facing our national effort to resist and
defeat terrorism. Though under different circumstances, I
eventually decided to do the same. I recently published a
book critical of our intelligence agencies because even after
9/11, they were not getting the message. After failing to win
the bureaucratic battle inside the Beltway, I decided to take
my case to the American people.
In recent years, a reliable source that I refer to as
``Ali'' began providing me with detailed inside information
on Iran's role in supporting terror and undermining the
United States' global effort to eradicate it. I have
forwarded literally hundreds of pages of information from Ali
to the CIA, FBI, and DIA, as well as the appropriate
congressional oversight committees. The response from our
intelligence agencies has been
[[Page H10013]]
underwhelming, to put it mildly. Worse, I have documented
occasions where the CIA has outright lied to me. While the
mid-level bureaucrats at Langley may not be interested in
what I have to say, their new boss is. Porter Goss has all of
the information I have gathered, and I know he is ready to do
what it takes to challenge the circle-the-wagons culture of
the CIA. And Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, is energized as well. Director Goss
and Chairman Hoekstra are both outstanding leaders that know
each other well from their work together in the House of
Representatives, and I will continue to strongly support
their efforts at reform.
All of this background leads to the reason I am writing to
you today. Yesterday the national news media began in-depth
coverage of a story that is not new. In fact, I have been
talking about it for some time. From 1998 to 2001, Army
Intelligence and Special Operations Command spearheaded an
effort called Able Danger that was intended to map out al
Qaeda. According to individuals that were part of the
project, Able Danger identified Mohammed Atta as a terrorist
threat before 9/11. Team members believed that the Atta cell
in Brooklyn should be subject to closer scrutiny, but
somewhere along the food chain of Administration bureaucrats
and lawyers, a decision was made in late 2000 against passing
the information to the FBI. These details are understandably
of great interest to the American people, thus the recent
media frenzy. However I have spoken on this topic for some
time, in the House Armed Services and Homeland Security
Committees, on the floor of the House on June 27, 2005, and
at various speaking engagements.
The impetus for this letter is my extreme disappointment in
the recent, and false, claim of the 9-11 Commission staff
that the Commission was never given access to any information
on Able Danger. The 9-11 Commission staff received not one
but two briefings on Able Danger from former team members,
yet did not pursue the matter. Furthermore, commissioners
never returned calls from a defense intelligence official
that had made contact with them to discuss this issue as a
follow on to a previous meeting.
In retrospect, it appears that my own suggestions to the
Commission might have directed investigators in the direction
of Able Danger, had they been heeded. I personally reached
out to members of the Commission several times with
information on the need for a national collaborative
capability, of which Able Danger was a prototype. In the
context of those discussions, I referenced LIWA and the work
it had been doing prior to 9/11. My chief of staff physically
handed a package containing this information to one of the
commissioners at your Commission's appearance on April 13,
2004 in the Hart Senate Office Building. I have spoken with
Governor Kean by phone on this subject, and my office
delivered a package with this information to the 9-11
Commission staff via courier. When the Commission briefed
Congress with their findings on July 22, 2004, I asked the
very first question in exasperation: ``Why didn't you let
Members of Congress who were involved in these issues testify
before, or meet with, the Commission?''
The 9-11 Commission took a very high-profile role in
critiquing intelligence agencies that refused to listen to
outside information. The commissioners very publicly
expressed their disapproval of agencies and departments that
would not entertain ideas that did not originate in-house.
Therefore it is no small irony that the Commission would in
the end prove to be guilty of the very same offense when
information of potentially critical importance was brought to
its attention. The Commission's refusal to investigate Able
Danger after being notified of its existence, and its recent
efforts to feign ignorance of the project while blaming
others for supposedly withholding information on it, brings
shame on the commissioners, and is evocative of the worst
tendencies in the federal government that the Commission
worked to expose.
Questions remain to be answered. The first: What lawyers in
the Department of Defense made the decision in late 2000 not
to pass the information from Able Danger to the FBI? And
second: Why did the 9-11 Commission staff not find it
necessary to pass this information to the Commissioners, and
why did the 9-11 Commission staff not request full
documentation of Able Danger from the team member that
volunteered the information?
Answering these questions is the work of the commissioners
now, and fear of tarnishing the Commission's legacy cannot be
allowed to override the truth. The American people are
counting on you not to ``go native'' by succumbing to the
very temptations your Commission was assembled to indict. In
the meantime, I have shared all that I know on this topic
with the congressional committee chairmen that have oversight
over the Department of Defense, the CIA, the FBI, and the
rest of our intelligence gathering and analyzing agencies.
You can rest assured that Congress will share your interest
in how it is that this critical information is only now
seeing the light of day.
Sincerely,
Curt Weldon,
Member of Congress.
This letter asks significant questions about a Top Secret
intelligence unit in the military that identified Mohammed Atta and
three associates in a Brooklyn cell 1 year before 9/11.
Mr. Speaker, these individuals are still in the military, and they
have offered to testify publicly, but this administration is gagging
them. This administration is not allowing these military officers to
speak, and in fact, the Defense Intelligence Agency is in the midst of
destroying the career of a 23-year Bronze Star recipient, a lieutenant
colonel in the Army, for doing one thing, for telling the truth.
Mr. Speaker, there are bureaucrats in this administration, in the
previous administration who do not want the story of Able Danger to
come forward. Even though this secret intelligence unit was ordered by
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, carried out by Special
Forces Command, and we now know had information 2 days before the
attack on the Cole that could have prevented 17 sailors from losing
their lives; and in January of 2000, identified Mohammed Atta and, in
September of 2000, tried to transfer that information to the FBI on
three occasions.
In fact, Mr. Speaker, the 9/11 Commission did not mention Able Danger
at all. When they were asked about it by the New York Times in August
of this year, they said, Well, it was historically insignificant.
Mr. Speaker, Louis Freeh, the FBI Director during the time of 9/11,
was interviewed on national news by Tim Russert on ``Meet the Press'' 2
weeks ago, and when he was asked about his role in the information on
9/11, he said, Well, you know, if we would have had the information
from the Able Danger team, and I quote, ``that is the kind of tactical
intelligence that would have made a difference in stopping the
hijacking.'' Louis Freeh says it could have stopped the hijacking, and
the 9/11 Commission now says it is historically insignificant.
Mr. Speaker, there is something wrong in the Beltway. Tomorrow, at
12:30 in the House gallery, I will unveil additional new information on
Able Danger. I will unveil an enhanced set of investigations because,
Mr. Speaker, in the end, the families of the 3,000 victims, the
families of the 17 sailors, the people in this country deserve to know
the truth.
What happened before 9/11? Why is information being held in secret?
Why are military officers being gagged? Why can the truth not be told?
Mr. Speaker, we must in this body demand the truth publicly.
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